


So We Put Our Hands Up

by vextant



Series: Happy Steve Bingo 2018 Fills [5]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Gratuitous Song References, Happy, Happy Steve Bingo, Karaoke, Not a lyric fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-07-11 13:19:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15973118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vextant/pseuds/vextant
Summary: Clint picks Steve up for karaoke tonight. Steve forgot all about karaoke tonight.--A fill for the prompt "Karaoke" for the Happy Steve Bingo 2018.





	So We Put Our Hands Up

Clint’s car—or the car that Clint showed up in—is nice enough, Steve supposes. He’s not much of a driver himself unless you count a bike (which a lot of his coworkers don’t, surprisingly), but there’s no reliable public transport this far upstate. Not to mention the whole Avengers Facility, top-secret, location classified, thumbprint-and-optical-scan-needed-to-enter business. He still isn’t really sure why Clint is driving at all—truth be told, Steve doesn’t remember actually signing up for whatever it is that they’re going to go do.

“Are you ready, pardner?” Clint grins as Steve climbs in the passenger seat.

“As I’ll ever be,” says Steve. He figures it’s enough of a non committal answer. 

“You got my emails, right?”

Oh boy.

Steve knows what this is about. It all comes back to him in a flood and he fights the urge to just dive out of the car, even though they’re moving at a pretty good clip and this is his favorite nice leather jacket he’s wearing. He wonders who he can text to get him out of it, if he can send a message subtly enough. Sharon’s at work, Nat and Bucky have probably already been there for an hour to scope the place out. Bucky would just laugh at him anyway. Sam would—who is he kidding, Sam would never back him up on this, the whole thing was Sam’s idea. Maybe he can call the authorities. Excuse me, officer, could you come give me a hand? You see, I’ve been kidnapped.

Then he remembers that he technically  _ is _ an authority, and takes a deep breath to steel himself. 

If he can get through the War, he can make it through one night of karaoke. 

(Though if he’s really honest, he kind of only made it through the War on a fluke.)

“—the playlist here.” Clint is saying as he messes with something on the steering wheel. About a dozen songs flip by on the screen—“Despacito”, “Hard to Handle”, “Party Rock Anthem”, “Super Bass”, “F**k You”, who names these things nowadays—all unfamiliar, with about a half second of noise playing along with each before Clint moves onto the next. “So if you’ve got any you’re not sure about, we can practice before we get there. I don’t know about you, but I’m not losing to Sam and Nat.”

Steve wouldn’t mind losing. In all honesty, he wouldn’t mind not going, just getting out right now and tumbling into the woods where he can live out the rest of his days with the bears and wolves and whatever else lives off the side of this upstate New York interstate. That seems easier than subjecting the whole team to him singing a song from an email he didn’t even open. 

Yeah—the emails are still sitting in his inbox, unread. 

He didn’t realize that it meant so much to Clint. It makes him feel guilty enough that he fakes feeling his phone buzz in his pocket right then and there. He turns the brightness all the way down and tries to subtly shift to lean against the door and opens his email. 

Wow, they were . . . a  _ while _ ago. Steve tries to think if he’s really been busy enough to justify no checking his email for a month. Then he supposes he can’t—he answers SHIELD inquiries about twice a week, and Clint’s almost always copied on those. Shit. 

“We only need two songs each, really—our real song and then a backup in case something technical goes horribly wrong or something.” Clint says, in between drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and half-singing “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” through his nose—Steve actually knows that record, Bucky likes it a lot too. “May third, if you’re looking for the whole list.”

“Uh.” Steve sort his messages by ‘sent from Barton’, since he can’t remember what email address they actually came from. He winces—there are quite a few with “karaoke” in the subject line. May third, there it is. 

“What track were you thinking about doing?”

The list is a whole damn hundred songs long. Steve scrolls quick, with another “uh” to buy himself time. Come on, Rogers. Something with a title you can confidently pronounce on the first try. Something that looks easy. “Uh, this- Can’t Hold Us?”

It comes out as a question on accident. Clint contemplates it longer than Steve’s seen him take to read team dossiers. Then he sniggers, “Can you rap, Cap? Here, let me pull it up.”

Steve’s heart stutters, and in his head he hears “fucking hell” clear as day in Bucky’s voice. But he’s in too deep now. 

“I—give me a second to pull up the lyrics again.” Steve says as he goes into his browser and searches for them. When they load he barely bites back a “wow”: “There. . . sure are a lot of them.”

It makes Clint laugh. “You’ve got about fifteen minutes to nail ‘em down pat before we get there.”

“Alright, alright.” Steve squirms a little in his seat to sit up straighter, like that’s going to help his singing voice. Or. . . rapping voice. Dum Dum used to say that he sounds like a kicked cat, and that was  _ after _ the professional lessons from the USO. “Alright, play it, let me try this.”

“Try?”

“Try. . . again. Practice.”

Clint grins. “I like the commitment. Sam and Nat are never gonna know what hit them.”

As he searches for the song, Steve prepares himself for an utter disaster. He’s not good with competition in something he’s not 100 percent confident in.

But this isn’t really a competition, is it? He’s got to think of it more along those lines. Sure, there are “grudges”—Clint wants to beat Nat and Bucky has recruited Wanda into helping him “smear Sam into paste”—but come to think of it, when was the last time they’ve all relaxed and enjoyed each other’s company, not as a team, but as friends? Tony even said he’d drag Rhodey along, a rare instance of the majority of the team being still and in one place at any point in time. 

That’s a good way to think of it. Time with his team—with his friends. He smiles to himself.    
  
The car swerves. Clint’s trying to pay attention to two things at once, which is not really ideal when one of those things is driving. 

“Here, I’ll find it.” Steve says, unceremoniously taking Clint’s phone and scrolling through the playlist. “Can’t you do it from the steering wheel?”

“There’s too many songs, I couldn’t find it.”   
  
Steve is scrolling through the list, filing it away in his mind for later. He tries to match his friends to what songs they would pick. He thinks he’d pay good money to see Sam sing that Spice Girls song in front of everybody. Finding his own track, he hesitates before clicking. “What song’d you pick?”   
  
“Me?” Clint grins. “Tubthumping. Classic.”

“What-thumping?”

“You’ll know it when you hear it.”   
  
“Oh.” Steve makes sure he has his lyrics ready and presses play.

**Author's Note:**

> The thought of Steve busting a flawless Macklemore impression just cracked me up too much to ignore. Also had to sneak my own ol' reliable karaoke track (Hard to Handle, The Black Crowes' version) in there. Yes, "the Spice Girls song" Steve's referencing that Sam should perform is Wannabe.
> 
> [Here is the tumblr post](https://vextant.tumblr.com/post/178016072076/so-we-put-our-hands-up) for this ficlet for easy liking and/or reblogging, if you're so inclined. Thanks for reading!


End file.
